


The Gift of Deception

by phenoob



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Burn injuries, Ficlet, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Orsinium DLC, wrothgar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26137942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phenoob/pseuds/phenoob
Summary: Rumours of Talviah's death at Paragon's Remembrance have been greatly exaggerated.Part of something I'm working on that follows the canon events of Orsinium with the minor tweak that both Talviah and Solgra survive.
Kudos: 6





	The Gift of Deception

Talviah Aliaria had a talent for illusion. It never served him well in Summerset, not in the way he wanted. His first memories of the craft were in his family's parlour, making an apple vanish from the table or retrieving a candlestick from thin air, while his parents' dinner guests `ooh'-ed and `ahh'-ed. They were impressed because he was little, not because he did anything impressive. Yet. But when the years went by, and his siblings won great victories over the other Alliances, the Sload, and the daedra, Talviah's only victory was growing old enough for guests to finally lose interest in his party tricks. There was not much else he could do with his abilities — what use would any respectable noble have for magics grounded in deception? — so it was easier simply to call himself the outcast, the only ordinary member of an extraordinary family.

Being the outcast made it easier to leave. Being ordinary made it easier to endure the realities of adventuring in a strange, cold land where the name `Aliaria' meant nothing.

But that morning, as Talviah limped towards the gates of Orsinium, he felt for the first time that he would have preferred to be in his family's parlour making things vanish. Making harmless baubles vanish, that is, not feigning suicide to appease fanatics. Not burning himself near-fatally in the process. Not taxing his magical faculties to the breaking point to heal himself and conceal his magic from a net of detection traps all at once. Yes, he would have preferred the warm, lilac-scented breezes of Alinor to the cold biting his flesh almost as cruelly as the flames had, to the city fumes grating upon his smoke-scorched lungs. He would have preferred his father's disappointment to the pain in his friend's uncomprehending eyes as they fell upon his ashes.

But Talviah was alive. His friends were alive, with the time and the information they needed to protect Orsinium, and he had to find them again as soon as he could. He had to see that his talent for illusion paid off after all. It was not the gift he would have preferred, but perhaps it was the one he was meant to have.


End file.
